Candidates

Germany has a thriving technology sector with plenty of exciting opportunities available for IT professionals. Some of the most in-demand tech roles in Germany include software developers, data scientists, cyber security experts, cloud computing specialists, and AI engineers. Looking for a new tech job in Germany? Click here to take an exclusive look at job opportunties across the country.

Why IT Professionals Want to Work in Germany

Growing Startup Ecosystem

Germany has a thriving startup ecosystem, with Berlin being one of the most vibrant startup hubs in Europe. It is also home to many established tech companies, including automotive giants Volkswagen and BMW, as well as software companies such as SAP and Siemens. This means that there are many exciting projects to get involved in and opportunities to work with cutting-edge technologies.

Strong Economy and Quality of Life

Germany has the strongest economy in Europe, known for its high quality of life and excellent public services, including healthcare, education, and public transport. German cities are generally safe, clean, and well-maintained, making them great places to live and work.

The country also has fantastic transport links to neighbouring European countries – an excellent location for tech professionals who want to work with companies across the continent.

High-Quality Education System

Germany has many prestigious universities, research institutions, and technical schools that provide excellent training in a wide range of technical fields. Many German employers offer extra training and development opportunities in tech jobs to help build a highly skilled workforce.

Competitive Salaries

You can expect higher salaries in tech jobs in Germany compared to other European countries, and Germany’s low cost of living means that your salary will go further. Many businesses are offering competitive salaries up to €100,000 per annum (depending on experience) to attract the very best technical talent for the role.

As a specialist IT recruitment agency, we can help negotiate a better salary on your behalf, based on your skills and experience – get in touch with us today.

Excellent Work-Life Balance

Germany is known for its excellent work-life balance. The country has strict laws governing working hours and vacation time, and employers are generally respectful of their employees’ time. This means that you can have a fulfilling IT career while still enjoying your personal life.

In recent years, hybrid and remote working options have grown in popularity and more companies are willing to invest in the technology and systems needed to support working from home.

Multicultural Society

Germany is a multicultural society, and many of its tech companies have diverse workforces. This means that you can work with people from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, which can be enriching both personally and professionally.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way we work and the way we interact with technology, creating new opportunities and challenges for businesses and individuals alike. But what does the future hold for IT professionals in tech jobs? Will AI impact employees negatively, or will it create new job opportunities?

In this post, we look at how AI is changing the tech industry and what you can do to future-proof your career as an IT professional in Europe.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

AI refers to the ability of machines and computer systems to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence, such as learning, problem-solving, decision-making, and natural language processing.

In the technology industry, AI is used to develop advanced algorithms and models that can analyse large amounts of data, make predictions, and automate complex processes.

The Current State of AI in Tech Jobs

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of many industries. During lockdown, businesses transitioned into a remote-first workspace, utilising tools such as video conferencing, cloud software, and e-commerce. This lead to an increased demand for technology professionals in cybersecurity, software development, and data analysis.

Fast forward to 2023, we are now in a period of economic decline. Major companies, such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are making dramatic cuts to their tech workforce – a consequence of over hiring during the pandemic or possibly in preparation for a recession. Despite this, there is still significant demand for tech jobs in Europe.

Many European countries have implemented policies to support the growth of the technology industry. For example, Germany launched a digitalisation initiative, also known as “Digital Strategy 2025,” to ensure that the country remains competitive in the global digital landscape. By investing in digital infrastructure, skills, and innovation, the initiative aims to create new jobs in the technology sector and drive economic growth in the coming years.

Preparing for the AI Revolution

Companies are increasingly using AI to streamline processes, improve productivity, and enhance customer experience. This will open up new jobs in artificial intelligence, responsible for designing, building and maintaining AI systems.

Some career paths that involve working with AI include:

Overall, the current state of AI in tech jobs is one of rapid growth and transformation, with the potential to create new and exciting opportunities for IT professionals who are willing to embrace the changes and develop new skills.

If you’re considering taking advantage of the exciting opportunities that AI is creating, seek expert guidance from IT recruitment specialists at Jonathan Rhys Recruitment. Click the button below to find out more about who we are and how we can help you with your long term career goals.

Advantages of Using a Recruitment Agency

Recruitment agencies exist to offer a helping hand to hiring companies and job seekers. They act as the middleman, negotiating on your behalf and offering expert advice to help you land your next job.

Technology in an industry saturated with job offerings. Companies are offering attractive employee packages for the best technical talent, but is the culture the right fit? As a specialist IT recruitment agency, we can help.

Spend Less Time Job Searching

When you parter with a recruitment agency, like us, job searching becomes less of a hassle. Our consultants are keen to understand your skills, experiences, and need, and bring relevant job opportunities to you. We keep in regular contact so that you do not miss the latest opportunity.

We have access to permanent IT jobs at top European companies. These jobs are not published on jobsites, less competition means an increased chance of an interview!

Benefit From Our Network

Another advantage of using a recruitment agency – we utilise our business connections to find the role suited to you.

We have built long-term relations with top European businesses, so finding a job is quicker and easier with us. We have access to the latest jobs in the market, and will contact you when new opportunities arrise. If we feel you are a great match for the role and company, our referrals can help get you fast-tracked to an interview.

Our reputation is very important to us, which is why we don’t just send CVs. Our thorough consultation process gives us an understanding your areas of expertise, job requirements, long term career goals and values. We then match talent to businesses that share similar goals in order to achieves long term success.

Receive Guidance From Specialists

Compared to other agencies whose services span across a range of industries, we prefer to be experts in our niche. When it comes to IT jobs, we know what skills are required for the role and what companies expect.

Our expert knowledge is passed on to our candidates. We share valuable insights in to the current market, company culture and progression opportunities – things a job post won’t tell you. You’ll receive 1:1 support from application through to interview, and thereafter, improving your chances of success.

Having a certain number of years coding experience could help you progress in to a new role. A Software Engineer could progress on to Project Manager with the right transferable skills. Our consultants are experts in identifying transferable skills, which open up new career prospects!

We Set You Up For Long Term Career Success

Knowing what to expect helps candidates feel more confident and gives them the best chance of success. This is another benefit of a recruiter. Our consultants offer advice on how to write a great CV and how to prepare for job interviews.

As your long term partner, our guidance and support continues even after you’ve accepted the job offer. When you are ready to make your next career move, we’ll be there to help.

Negotiations On Your Behalf

Avoid wasting time attending multiple technical interviews without fully knowing what’s on offer.

As recruiters, it’s our responsibility to understand your needs and wants early on. Our consultants can advise on a salary range based on industry knowledge, your skills, experience, and qualifications. When we carry out negotiations, we aim to get the best possible outcome for our candidates and clients. This is one of the best benefits of recruiters!

LinkedIn is the no.1 professional social networking site that brings millions of job seekers, recruiters and hiring companies together. If you’re a tech professional looking for a new job, LinkedIn’s Jobs service can help you find your next role. However, a well-tailored CV showing employers that your the best person for the role may not be enough to land an interview as 9 out of 10 employers use LinkedIn as part of the hiring process.

LinkedIn Tips for Tech Professionals

Your LinkedIn profile says a lot about how you present yourself. It showcases your work experience, skills, interests, certifications, and more. 1st-degree connections can make recommendations and endorse your skills to enhance credibility. You can share posts, make connections and interact with other tech professionals. Potential employers have full visibility of this, so having an attractive profile can really make a difference! Here are our LinkedIn tips:

Professional Imagery

Your profile photo should not be the same photo used on other social networking sites. It should be a good quality photo with smart attire and a plain background.

Upload your own cover image that promotes ‘you’.  There are free design tools online, like Canva, which has LinkedIn banner templates to help you create something visually appealing. Or you can opt for a relevant photograph – something that reflects your skills or profession.

Profile Updates

Ensure that your basic information contains specific keywords relative to your profession. Engineers, developers, IT experts may want to mention current projects, coding languages and frameworks (Python, Javascript, etc.) in descriptions. This will populate your profile with relevant keywords that Recruiters will use to filter potential candidates on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn profiles appear in Google search results, so if a potential employer searches for you during their pre-checks, they should see an up-to-date and engaging page.

List Technical Skills

You can add up to 50 skills to your page to show recruiters and hiring managers what your areas of expertise lie. LinkedIn will make suggestions based on your profile, but you should add specific terms to show your specialisation. For example, “Full Stack Engineer” is a more valuable keyword than “Web Developer”.

Opt to take LinkedIn Skill Assessments to demonstrate knowledge of your skills. Technical subjects range from MySQL, C++ and C# to Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Power BI. If you pass, you will be awarded a badge on your public profile. This could help set you apart from competition.

Request Recommendations

You can request recommendations from any of your 1st-degree connections to endorse your skillset. LinkedIn Recommendations are testimonials from colleagues, previous employers or other technical professionals that you’ve worked with. These give an insight in to projects you’ve worked on, your skills set, and your work ethic.

Network, network, network!

Engaging with others and sharing your own content will help you get noticed by other industry professionals and build your connections. You can also request to connect with people you know to help build your network.

Show potential employers that you are a great advocate by engaging with posts from your current company’s LinkedIn profile.

Join networking groups within your industry and contribute to form discussions. Show off your expertise and add value where you can. Your activity will be shared on your profile.

LinkedIn Jobs

With 8 people hired every minute LinkedIn, it is a great way to search for jobs.

Under the Jobs tab, you can use the Resume Builder to create an up-to-date CV, set up job alerts and browse recommended jobs based on your profile.

As an IT recruitment agency, we can help you find your dream tech job with a top business in Europe. We’ll be there every step of the way, offering our expert advice and negotiating on your behalf. Contact us to find out how we can help you take the next step in your career.

You can also follow our LinkedIn page  for more job search tips and career advice.

Interview preparation is the key to success. For IT professionals, the interview process tends to be longer and more challenging. Many companies now offer hybrid or permanently remote tech jobs, which widens the candidate pool to professionals in other cities or overseas. Hiring managers need to be certain that their chosen candidate has the technical skills required to do the job, therefore the interview process is divided in to two (or more) parts:

• An initial phone or video interview to establish your personality, experiences and qualifications.
• A technical interview to establish your coding skills and problem-solving abilities.

Practicing professionalism and developing your interview skills could help get you through to the technical interview. Here are our top interview tips…

Interview Preparation: Tips for Tech Professionals

1) Research the Company

Whether you’re applying for Data Scientist, Software Engineer or Web Developer, it’s important to research the company thoroughly. This will help you craft meaningful questions for your interview and decide if the company is the right fit for you.

Take a look at the company website to learn more about their products and services, customer demographics and competitors. You can learn more about a company through:

• Social media: A company’s social media accounts are a window in to company culture, activities and achievements. You can get a better understanding of the company’s values and priorities based on what they are willing to publicly share.
• LinkedIn: Find out about new hires, promotions, vacancies, and company statistics. You may also be able to learn more about your interviewer, their job and career background. Do you have any common links that could help you build rapport, such as mutual connections or interests?
• Glassdoor: Enables current and former employees to share honest feedback about their interview experiences, salaries, work environment and company culture anonymously.
• Google and Google News: You may discover that the company is expanding or that they’ve formed a new partnership. This knowledge can help you determine company growth/success.

2) Practice Answering Common IT Interview Questions

Before the initial interview, research common IT interview questions online and practice answering them.

Most interviewers start with an opening question about yourself and your experiences, then gradually move on to more technical questions. Here’s how you should structure your answers to opening questions:

• The past – what is your academic background and relevant work experience? How did you get to where you are now?
• The present – what is your current role? What do you do and what are your top accomplishments?
• The future – what are you looking to do next? Why are you interested in the position?

Practice answering common behavioural questions using STAR format. Try to incorporate a relevant project you are most proud of in your answers to help explain your contribution/success.

3) Prepare Questions For The Interviewer

Prepare a few technical questions and generic questions that you can ask your interviewer. For example, you may want to find out what coding languages they use, current projects, or people you’ll be working with.

Some examples of generic interview questions:

“Can you tell me more about the day-to-day responsibilities of the role?”

Asking this question enables you to learn as much about the role as possible.  It will give you an idea of what the employer’s expectations are, and what skills and experience are needed.

“Can you tell me about the team I’ll be working with?”

The people you work with will inevitably impact your workplace experience, so it’s in your best interest to find out more about the team. Note down names of people you will be reporting to and working with so that you can do your own research later on. 

“What is your work culture like?”

This will help you understand what the work-life balance is like and the benefits on offer.

“Are there training and progression opportunities within the role/company?”

Enquiring about development opportunities shows the interviewer that you’re serious about your career and committed to a future with the organisation. It will also help you to assess whether a long-term career with the company is a possibility.

“What goals do you have for the next five years?”

Asking about future plans reiterates your commitment to the company. The response you receive will give you an insight into the company’s progression plans and its place in the market, and a general idea about job security. You may also get a heads-up on any major upcoming projects.

4) Set A Good Impression

It is important you dress smart for any kind of interview, whether it is in-person or remote. This not only sets a good impression that you are a trustworthy professional, it will also help you get in the right mindset for an interview. If you’re ever in doubt on what is an acceptable dress code, ask the recruiter.

5) Mock Interview Preparation

Practice makes perfect – particularly with job interviews. Mock interviews help you practice your personal skills, such as communication and problem-solving.

However, for more technical skills, such as Computer Science and coding, you may want to use online resources. LeetCode, HackerRank, Codewars, and FreeCodeCamp are just some of the many useful platforms available that offer coding challenges and questions to help you practice. Try explaining your thought process and decisions making out loud as you solve each problem – interviewers will want to understand how you think. 

Remember, confidence comes with experience. As you progress in your career, you will develop your skills, broaden your knowledge, and become more experienced within your role – which will help you feel more confident.

We hope that these tips help you feel more prepared in your next interview and help you land your dream job. Good luck!

If you are a job seeker that is just starting out, check out these 5 Tips To Strengthen Your CV.

Your CV (which stands for Curriculum Vitae) is your biggest opportunity to land an interview for your dream job. But what makes a good CV? A good CV should highlight your skills, achievements, experiences and qualifications, and show recruiters and potential employers that you’re the ideal person for the job.

Presenting your best self on paper can be tough. In this article, we will be sharing our CV tips to help you stand out and increase your chances of a job interview.

Tailor your CV to each job you apply for to maximise your chances of being shortlisted by recruiters, employers, and Applicant Tracking Systems.

Applicant Tracking Systems (or ATS) are used by larger companies to automate the screening process. ATS scans hundreds of CVs for specific keywords and shortlists ones that are a match.

Read through the job description and take note of the keywords and key skills mentioned, include relevant ones in your personal statement, work experiences and skills section. This will help optimise your CV for search engines, so that you are easily found by recruiters and employers.

Recruiters spend a mere 6 seconds reviewing a CV to determine suitability before moving on to the next. Your personal statement or opening statement is a career summary at the top of the page that summarise your character and career goals. Here’s how to write a strong personal statement:

Include your most relevant achievement in your personal statement – this immediately conveys success and portrays you in a positive light.

Mention personal and professional achievements under work experiences, instead of listing responsibilities. This could help you land an interview so that the employer can learn more about you.

• Personal achievements: receiving an award, winning a competition, volunteering, achieving high grades in studies
• Professional achievements: saved the company time and money, increased performance, met and exceeded work targets

Remember to include metrics to help communicate success to the reader, see our next tip.

Your experiences sit beneath your personal statement. They should be an accurate account of your employment history with your most recent work experience at the top. Another CV tip is to keep it under two pages, we recommend using bullet points to list your experiences.

In this section, focus on your accomplishments to show that you’ve made a positive impact. Avoid listing workplace duties and responsibilities.

A great way to communicate success is to include Key Performance Indicators (KPI). State your most eye-catching results on paper as numbers, percentages, or other measurable metrics. Make sure you include time frame, scale, and results. This will help the recruiter or employer assess your ability to do a job.

If you can do this successfully, you increase your chances of getting shortlisted for an interview.

Strengthen your CV by using action verbs in your list of accomplishments.

What is an action verb?

Action verbs are verbs that convey doing.

For example, an IT professional may want to use “configured”, “engineered”, “converted” as they are more powerful and industry specific.

The goal here is to convince the recruiter that you are fit for the position. Using action verbs at the beginning of sentences makes your contribution clear and impactful and can increase the reader’s interest.

If you aren’t quite sure how to use action verbs in your CV and interviews, check out Indeed’s Career Guide which includes over 150 examples!

Our last CV tip – first impressions count. Your CV should be concise and neatly formatted so that recruiters and ATS can find what they are looking for.

We recommend creating a CV in Word or in PDF format as both offer readability and are ATS-friendly.

Before you start applying for jobs, check that your personal information is up-to-date and consistent with your LinkedIn profile. Any inaccuracies between the two sends a red flag to recruiters!